Centre for Educational TechnologyTallinn University, Estonia
Narva mnt. 25, T-51110120, TallinnEstoniaPhone: (+372) 6409 355e-mail: [email protected]
A Conceptual Model for Collaborative Scientific Writing
David Lamas, Vladimir Tomberg, Mart [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
INITIAL CONCEPTS
Having different everyday tools and workflows,
how researchers can effectively collaborate
online in the process of scientific writing?
Collaborative writing is common and often
unavoidable in academic work as written doc-
uments, such as articles, reports and presen-
tations are mostly produced collaboratively.
We consider that collaborative writing is the
process of two or more people working
together to create a complex document, irre-
spectively of locus or synchronicity.
As showed on the concept map we interpret
the process of collaborative writing as a pro-
ject.
Instead of organizing users into groups we
propose the concept of sharing resources
in associated timelines. If two or more
researchers are ready to start collaboration,
they should share their timelines with each
other.
By marking own resources as public and
private the users can precisely define what
resources they want to share.
The process of sharing timelines between
two users is illustrated on figure. Gray lines
mark resources to be shared; private
resources are painted in black color.
A final step in our design process was to
design Timeliner's system architecture as a
mash-up of external data and functionalities
provided by third-party services (see figure).
This means that Timeliner has almost no con-
cern about storing data but rather focus on
the processing of metadata related to exter-
nal data. By using different types of metadata
as glue, Timeliner can bring together, into a
new writing ecosystem, resources that were
separated before.
SHARING TIMELINES
CONNECTING RESOURCES
FIRST UI PROTOTYPE
We have designed first software prototype
for Timeliner using concept of resources asso-
ciated with specific writing project and
arranged around project timeline. At the top
current status of target document is dis-
played. The researcher can create tasks,
assign them to coworkers, and bind to them
resources.
The tasks, milestones and resources can be
tagged and annotated. All activities are
tracked in diary, which also has interface for
participants’ chat.
Shared resource Private resource
User A
Tasks
Tasks
Documents
Visible shared resources
User B
Documents
Timeliner is an Internet based tool
designed to support collaborative sci-
entific writing. The need for Timeliner
rises from daily challenges regarding
collaborative scientific writing pro-
cesses.
Challenges faced by ourselves but also
elaborated upon by both our local
research community as well as by mem-
bers of our international research pro-
jects' teams.
The problem we address by offering
Timeliner is about supporting collabo-
rative scientific writing with minimal dis-
ruption of concurrent practices and
workflows.
6/1/2003 11/30/2005
Researcher
Timeliner Multi API Engine
11/4/2005
Publication
6/30/2005
Camera ready
9/1/2003 - 10/10/2003
Writing Abstract
10/15/2003 - 10/9/2005
Rewiev and Approval Process
10/12/2003
Abstract
11/13/2004
Deadline
Data Layer
Metadata Layer
Visualisation Layer
Users Layer
API API API API API API API API
API
Local resources
Milestones